Poking Fun At Themselves.

Essential to the band's comic timing, as this second extract from an essay on the funny heart of U2 by Bill Flanagan reveals.

This second of two exclusive extracts is taken from the newly published 'U2 The Best of Propaganda'.

When U2 became the biggest band in the world in the eighties, somehow, for many people, they also became one of the most serious. ZOO TV and the nineties U2

shattered that image. Propaganda, the band's official magazine, commissioned Flanagan, then editor of Musician - and on the road with the band in the process of writing his own acclaimed book 'U2 At The End Of The World' - to explore how far the image of a band can depart from the reality!

"We sent a letter to Mr Paul McGuinness," Edge says,
"requesting your services to play some drums."

"It's the song we were playing last night," Bono says.
"Apparently you did a tremendous job but the rest of us ..."

Adam says, "Amazingly enough YOU were fine."

"We face a problem we have faced in the past," Bono explains.
"The song has no chorus."

"Aha!" Larry says.

'Generally', continues Flanagan, 'Adam is the quickest with a quip, which may be part
of why Adam has a looser image than the other three. Bono's humour is missed by those who assume that everything he says has the weight of philosophy behind it - and miss his gift for leg-pulling at an Olympic level. Edge's jokes are so deadpan that they
fly over some heads. Larry probably has the biggest obstacle to
overcome in getting his wit across, because Larry's humour usually
comes out in the classic Ralph Kramden slow-burn of the
straightman whose patience has been stretched past the breaking point by the nuts around him.
Larry phoned me after reading my book in
manuscript and said, "You make it look like I'm angry all
the time."
I said "That's silly, Larry, I do not."
He said, "Let me read you a list of some of your descriptions of me: 'Larry
fumes, Larry burns, Larry shouts, Larry sneers, Larry comes in boiling, Larry says angrily, Larry's pissed, Larry got upset, Larry was mad ..."

I had to admit Larry had a point. What I had not considered
and I dare say what even other band members who read the
book might not have noticed - is that if you know Larry you
know that his 'This is the last straw' persona is a running
joke. But objective readers would not realize this; they'd just
figure Larry was always in a bad mood. Heck, one time - toward
the end of the Zoo TV tour - Larry greeted me by saying, "Three
more weeks of seeing your ugly face!" Of course he was joking
(Wasn't he?).

There is one other reason why U2 have gotten an undeserved
reputation as Serious Men. While they are not stuffy, they are
very kind. Most humour pokes fun at someone or something. U2
can do hilarious riffs on any number of silly people they encounter
in their professional lives. Between Bono's impressions, Edge's
one-liners, and Adam's bon mots, they skewer a wide range of
showbiz hustlers and sleazy hypocrites. But while U2 are happy
to publicly poke fun at themselves and their own vanities (to their
detriment if journalists don't get the joke), they are very sensitive
about hurting the feelings of even a deserved target with an
offhand crack on TV or in a magazine.

My deal with U2 was that I'd let them read my book about
them before publication so that they could correct, object or
argue - but I had full control of what I decided to keep or
change. There are probably things in the book that are
annoying to the band members, moments they were sorry I
was around to record. I wondered how hard they would lobby
me to change those bits. To my surprise none of them asked for
any of that to be cut. Adam said, "Well there's some things
in there that I'm sorry you wrote but I understood the
groundrules so fair enough." What Adam did ask me to change
was a funny joke he made at the expense of someone who is not
famous. Bono was the same way - he was very concerned with
hurting the feelings of people who might have been a little bit
silly, or behaved in a way that invited teasing, but felt did not
deserve to be mocked in print. That became the pattern for
Edge, Larry and Paul McGuinness too. They didn't mind what
I said about them - they wanted to spare the feelings of others.
If that meant that their own wit might not come through, that
was to them a fair trade.

I didn't always agree to the changes U2 wanted - in some places
I left their wise-guy jokes at the expense of silly people. But I
thought it was remarkable that they were so willing to publicly
kid themselves and so bothered by the thought of publicly
teasing someone else. I realized then that as great as their sense
of humour is, their sense of humanity is even better.